Dr Christopher Wylde

Associate Professor in International Relations

Dr Christopher Wylde

Biography

Chris joined the School of Communications, Arts, and Social Sciences in September 2013. His research is on the political economy of development, particularly in post-crisis states, with a focus on the political economy of post 2001 crisis Argentina, and changing meta-theoretical interpretations of those changes.

Chris has published widely on post-crisis Argentina, as well on the rise of the left in the first decade of the 21st Century in Latin America. These publications include a research monograph for PalgraveMacmillan’s IPE Series titled Latin America After Neoliberalism: Developmental Regimes in Post-Crisis States, and a forthcoming second monograph Emerging Markets and the State. The first book was an examination of the so-called ‘pink tide’ that has swept across the Latin American continent since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, with detailed case studies of Lula’s Brazil and the Kirchner’s Argentina. The book also attempts to provide a meta-theoretical framework – termed the Developmental Regime – derived from the discipline of (international) political economy of development in order to understand, interpret, and illuminate the policy changes identified through fieldwork in both Brazil and Argentina. The second book seeks to extend and enhance this Developmental Regime approach to develop a robust framework for understanding capitalist states at early stages of development and why they follow certain development trajectories rather than others.

Chris is also currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) in the School of Advanced Study (SAS). Before joining the School Chris worked at the University of York as a Teaching Fellow in International Political Economy, at UUM in Malaysia as a Visiting Lecturer in International Studies, as well as an Investigador Visitante at FLACSO Argentina. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Leeds in 2010, which was on post-crisis Argentine political economy 2003-2007, funded by an ESRC 1+3 studentship.

Research Centre

Chris is a member of the Research Centre for the Study of the State, Power, and Globalisation (SPG).

Teaching

Chris teaches on the International Relations Major and the International Development Major. He also teaches on the MA International Development and MA International Relations.

Chris currently teaches on courses concerning International Relations theory, Global Governance, Research Methods, and Latin American development, as well as individual research projects (dissertations) at both undergraduate and post-graduate level.

Current Research Projects

1. Chris is currently working on a project that is seeking to further investigate the nature of post-neoliberalism in contemporary Argentina. He received funding from the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), and held a conference in the Spring of 2015 at ILAS to bring together contemporary contributions on post-neoliberalism. He is currently working on an edited volume from the work and themes of that conference.

2. Chris is also currently preparing a manuscript for Palgrave Macmillan on the nature of Power in the Americas from colonisation to the “Pink Tide”. This book will represent the formalisation of his thoughts and lectures from one of his modules that he teaches at Richmond, the American International University in London called “Power in the Americas”.

3. Chris is putting the finishing touches to a new monograph Emerging Markets and the State. This book seeks to develop a Developmental Regime approach in understanding twenty-first century developmentalism in Emerging Markets; ultimately providing a framework for understanding why capitalist states at early stages of development follow certain trajectories over others.

4. Chris is also under contract with Routledge Europa to co-edit a new International Handbook, The Handbook of South American Governance. Bringing together a wide range of both established as well as emerging scholars this volume will offer a comprehensive overview of the current state of the art in the debates and literature on issues both old and new for contemporary South American Governance.

Previous Research Projects

De la Crisis de 2001 al Kirchnerismo

Comprehensively revised and updated in the context of the rise of Mauricio Macri, this translated version of Argentina since the 2001 crisis is published by leading Argentine academic publisher Prometeo. Focusing on the Kirchner’s as a political regime and using the election of Mauricio Macri to the presidency of Argentina as a key point of departure, this book looks to understand the Kirchner era in its entirety, recognising that its form and character were fundamentally shaped by the nature of the 2001 crisis.

2. Argentina since the 2001 crisis

Bringing together contributions from both emerging and established scholars, this volume explores the myriad effects and legacies of Argentina’s 2001-02 social, economic and political implosion and is unique in its interrogation of the nature and effects of crisis. It seeks to reject false dichotomies of ‘old’ and ‘new’; instead synthesizing them in order to incorporate both elements of continuity and elements of change into its analysis. The authors assert that responses to crisis do not only involve the merging of old and new, but that they are also, concurrently responses to both old and new problems – many of which were evident in the 1990s and earlier. Crisis is shown to manifest itself in a number of realms – political, economic, social – and the responses to it and associated recovery are thus analyzed and interpreted through a myriad of lenses in order to adequately capture the nature of the salient dynamics that are present within them. In this way, the volume seeks to adopt a more nuanced approach to analyzing Argentina since 2001 as well as crisis more generally.

3. Latin America After Neoliberalism

The multiple-faceted crisis of 2001-02 in Argentina spelled the end of IMF domination in Argentine economic policy. The post-crisis administration of Nestor Kirchner abandoned IMF tutelage and instead embraced the principles of neodesarrollismo, fundamentally reforming the role of the state in the market, in society, and in its intersection with global capital. Greater state involvement in the market and a renegotiation of the Peronist social contract served to fundamentally alter the political economy of post-crisis Argentina, and facilitated a dramatic economic recovery that continued until the global financial crisis from 2007 onwards. Brazil’s post crisis (1998) economic performance has also been commendable, and now represents one of the countries that is considered to be a powerhouse of the future (exemplified by its ‘BRIC’ status). As in Argentina, there have been important economic changes that have facilitated changes in Brazilian political economy in general, making a transition from neoliberal policies and forms of political economy in the 1990s to a distinctive new form of political economy under the premiership of Lula.

Such recoveries bring into question the continuing efficacy of neoliberal political economy in post-crisis states, and sharpen focus on the role of the ‘developmental regime’. This book therefore seeks to place the Argentine crisis of 2001/02 and the Brazilian crisis of 1998 in the context of crisis in general, both in regional and global settings. The post-crisis responses of Argentina and Brazil will be analysed in respect of regional responses – given the regional process characterised as the ‘Rise of the Pink Tide’, and identify any theoretical implications that result from such an investigation. In addition, such processes will be analysed from a global perspective – comparing and contrasting post-crisis political economy in Latin America with that in East Asia and Europe/US. Therefore, can the developmental regime model be applied to Latin America more broadly, and does it represent a helpful meta-theoretical model for understanding contemporary Latin American political economy? What are the implications for post-crisis recovery of the Developmental Regime model when compared to other forms of political economy: namely neoliberalism.

Wylde, C. (2014)‘The Developmental State is dead, long live the Developmental Regime! Interpreting Nestór Kirchner’s Argentina 2003-2007, Journal of International Relations and Development, 17(2), 191-219.

Wylde, C. (2010) Argentina, Kirchner, and Neodesarrollismo: The Impact of the 2001 Financial Crisis on Argentine Development 2003-2007, Documento de Trabajo No. 46, Area de Relaciones Internacionales, FLACSO/Argentina.

Wylde, C. (2012)‘The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Kirchnerismo, and the changing relationships of the Argentine state’, SLAS Annual Conference, Sheffield.

Wylde, C. (2011) ‘The Causes of the Argentine Financial Crisis: Economic Imbalance and Social Upheaval’, ISA Conference – Crisis, Response and Recovery: One Decade on from the Argentinazo 2001-2010, London.

Wylde, C. (2010)‘Argentina, Kirchner, and Neodesarrollismo: Argentine political economy 2003-2007’, Conference at the University of Nottingham: The Pink Tide: Reconfiguring politics, power, and political economy in the Americas?

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I teach on:
International Relations and International Development

Some of the courses I teach:AMS 5200 – Power in the Americas
INR 4100 – Introduction to International Relations
INR 7100 – Research Methodology
INR 7105 – Global Political Economy
INR 6297 – Snr Seminar in International Relations 2

Research Interest & Expertise:
Broad research areas include the political economy of post-crisis development, theory of the state, and post-neoliberalism. Area studies specialities include Argentina and Brazil (as well as Latin America more widely), and South East Asia.